The Swan River Colony’s Early Roads and Railways Thomas Sinclair was born at Skelberry, in the parish of Dunrossness at the southern tip of Mainland Shetland, on 8 August 1828. He was the eldest son of George Sinclair, a tenant farmer, and Margaret Bain, and...
What made people migrate to Western Australia? In the early years of the State, or the Swan River Colony as it was called, there were a couple of main reasons which depended upon the social and economic background of the immigrant. Those with money saw...
The Taylor family arrived in Perth in September 1891 and John started business as a boarding-house keeper. Two years later he applied successfully for a publican’s licence and took up management of the Cannington Hotel. A newspaper advertisement proudly set out what the hotel had...
Writing about her experiences onboard the migrant ship Tartar, Janet Millett stated that whenever the ship encountered really bad weather her husband would go to the married persons’ quarters where he would look after the women and children, presumably to reassure them and also to give...
John Skinner Prout (1805-1876) was an artist who came to Australia in the 1840s. He described his voyage out to Australia in an article in The Illustrated London News, with sketches of life on board ship. Emigrants to the Swan River Colony would have had a similar...
Laurence Sinclair was the youngest of three Sinclair brothers to come to Western Australia from the Shetland Islands in the mid-19th Century. He was born in Skelberry, Dunrossness, on the 30th of January 1831, to parents George and Margaret Sinclair.1 It’s not known precisely when...
When John Taylor was running the Albany Hotel he had a brush with the police who accused him of harbouring deserters from the Albany garrison. The soldiers had been celebrating New Year’s Eve in1894 and a few decided to remain at the hotel rather than...
John Charles Playle was from Essex and arrived in Western Australia in 1842, placing him among the pioneers of the Swan River Colony. John was born in the village of Stebbing in 1821, one of the five children of John and Susan Playle (nee Whitehead)....
The featured image is Canal Street, Wolverhampton, taken in the 19th century. One of the houses in this street was the home of the Turner family and the birthplace of Jane Turner, the future Mrs Jane ‘Jenny’ Taylor. Jane’s father was Charles Turner, born in...
John Robert Hallam senior died accidentally at his home in North Melbourne in 1901. Because it was a sudden death an inquest had to be held. It revealed a life of heavy drinking that ultimately led to his death from suffocation in a drunken stupor. At...
© 2026 — Michael Robinson, Bedford, Western Australia.